Sunday, June 22, 2008

Through fully nine, count ‘em, nine paragraphs, in which veteran Regina Leader-Post columnist Murray Mandryk asks readers to forget this, that, and the other thing, he seems willfully oblivious to electoral reality in “the West” — not only as it has been in living memory, as it stands at present, but also as it most likely will remain for the foreseeable future; that is to say, an unassailable fortress of “Conservative” power. Therefore, bemoaning the fact that Stéphane Dion may conceivably have written off a large portion “the West” with his proposed “Green Shift” carbon tax plan provokes little more than a shrug or perhaps a mordant chuckle at such a “loss” of wholly non-existent potential.

Here in the more temperate, western most part of “the West” it’s doubtful that Dion’s “Green Shift” will affect traditional Liberal strongholds in metro Vancouver and, by putting forward a strong environmental position, it might even give them the edge needed to pull ahead in tight three-way ridings where vote-splitting with the NDP has allowed the CPC to win by running up the middle. If so, that would offset the handful of seats lost elsewhere on the inhospitable prairies. As for the interior of B.C., all of Alberta and much of Saskatchewan and Manitoba… Well, the Conservatives could run a bag of poo in most ridings in those places and still get it elected (and I dare say, that in some cases, they’d be better represented were that indeed the case).

Just as a postscript, there’s already been one positive benefit to the “Green Shift” and that is, rather predictably, that it’s served to make the crazies… even crazier!